


collected short works

by alcibiades



Category: Captain America (Movies), Hannibal (TV), House of Cards (US TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Steve Rogers, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Chronic Illness, Eating Disorders, Food Issues, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Medical Procedures, Medical Torture, Nightmares, Steve Rogers on the internet, all the winter soldier tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-05-05 10:43:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 13,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5372393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alcibiades/pseuds/alcibiades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Assorted small pieces of nonsense from the many untitled TextEdit docs of my life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chocolate

_1\. Bucky_

When he walks into the room, he doesn't quite believe what he's seeing. Everything -- _everything_ is out of the cupboards, spread out on the floor in a neat concentric ring, with Bucky at the center of it. He's naked, with that expression on his face -- the glazed, empty one, the one that Steve hates having become familiar with. 

He's shoveling something into his mouth. Steve picks through the wreckage, careful not to disturb anything, and crouches down in front of him, not touching him. He doesn't get any acknowledgement, and he can't tell what Bucky's doing; Bucky's stance is that of a protective animal, hiding its valuable find from anyone who might try to take it away. 

"Bucky?" he says. There's no response, so he clears his throat, adopts his Captain America voice, and says, loathing himself, "Soldier?"

Bucky blinks, and looks up at Steve. Gradually, his eyes focus and his expression changes, the emptiness washing away and being replaced by the downturned curve of Bucky's mouth, the curl of his brows. He pulls his hands away from his face, looks at them, and then reaches up to clear his mouth of a half-chewed chunk of -- something.

"Is that --" says Steve, and then looks down, and he can see that Bucky's already eaten his way through two entire packages of baking chocolate and is halfway through a third. Bucky pushes his tongue out, and it's covered in chocolate too, his entire mouth stained with it. It's not even the sweet kind, it wouldn't even taste good --

The expression on Bucky's face now is something like pain. "Someone gave me chocolate once," he says. "At the end of a mission, I think -- they --" he mimes picking something up and putting it in his open mouth, on his tongue. "And then when I started asking for it, they -- I don't -- they --"

"It's all right," Steve says. Bucky doesn't have to tell him the rest. He doesn't want to know the rest.

+++

_2\. Steve_

Sam's birthday is in August, and it's fucking hot as hell and humid, which begs the question why anybody thought it was a good idea to have a party on the tower's rooftop deck in the first place. Everybody is shiny and glowing with sweat and they keep going back into the glass-walled enclosure to cool down in the A/C - except for Tony, who's just sitting inside with his sunglasses on, saluting everyone with his cocktail glass, complete with tiny umbrella, as they walk past.

Bucky's stuck on grill duty, which means he's outside for good, unless he feels like risking any of the food for a brief gasp of cool air, which he doesn't. He's got his shirt off and he regrets not wearing shorts - Steve had worn shorts and Bucky had laughed at him and told him he looked like a Boy Scout. He turns one of the steaks, looking critically at the sear on it, and then moves to a rack of ribs. This better be worth it, he thinks. Better be worth it.

By the time it's all done and plated up, Bucky hasn't seen Steve for about fifteen minutes. He touches Pepper's shoulder - Pepper might just be the only one who doesn't look totally sweaty and bedraggled in her cotton sundress - and says, "I'm gonna go look for Steve. I'll be right back, don't let them sing 'happy birthday' without me."

He finds Steve in their apartment, frantically going through the cabinets with -- "Is that Sam's cake?" Bucky asks. It looks suspiciously like Sam's triple layer chocolate fudge cake, sitting on the counter next to Steve, except that half of it is gone. 

Steve gives him an eloquently guilty look. "Jesus christ, Steve," says Bucky. "I told you to eat something beforehand, I told you it'd take a while for everything to cook."

"I _know_ ," Steve says, looking at the wreck of the cake. "Do we even have any cake mixes here?"

"No," Bucky says.

Steve exhales, rubbing his hands over his face. "Okay," he says. "Okay. So what if we just eat it all, and pretend that there never was a cake in the first place?"

Bucky stares at him. "You are unreal," he says. "Just unreal."


	2. doctor lecter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky has a new therapist.

He had prepared himself by the time he was walking out of the office and back through the waiting room, to tell Steve. Steve would be outside with the car; he'd promised to pick Bucky up, to minimize the awkwardness of the whole thing by making it as seamless as possible. Not that it was particularly possible for any of it to feel seamless when it required driving four hours from New York to Baltimore to see this doctor -- this _particular_ , carefully chosen, carefully vetted doctor.

He had come up with a whole list of reasons, none of which had anything to do really with Dr. Lecter himself. Dr. Lecter was very deeply polite, calm and placid in his outward manner. His office was beautiful. He hadn't flinched even slightly at anything Bucky had said -- and Bucky had ended up saying a lot more than he had intended. Dr. Lecter seemed to be adept at a sort of game of cat-and-mouse, where he'd push lightly on boundaries and then retreat from them just as quickly before Bucky could really process he'd been there at all.

So it didn't make sense to make it about Dr. Lecter. There wasn't a single outwardly explicable thing that Bucky could say about Dr. Lecter that would make sense to Steve. He had to make it about himself. That he could do. He had plenty of problems of his own.

He showed himself out and closed the door as quietly as he could, reaching for his coat where he'd set it on the coat rack. He could feel Steve's presence in the room, but Steve didn't say anything, so Bucky started. "Before you ask me how it went," he said, starting to button his coat, "I don't think I can see him again."

The silence stretched uncomfortably, and Bucky sighed, reaching for his scarf and looping it around his neck. "It's," he said, and suddenly he couldn't bring himself to lie. He'd done a lot of lying to Steve recently, and sometimes it was the small, mundane ones that were the worst ( _I'm okay, I'm fine, it's nothing, just surprised_ ). They had piled into a mountain. 

"He's a killer, Steve," Bucky said, all at once. "Don't ask me how I know, I just do. Like recognizes like, or something like that. He's a fucking -- killer, and I can't -- can't talk to him."

Steve still didn't say anything, so Bucky turned around as he did up the top button of his coat, and found it wasn't Steve at all. It was some other guy he'd never seen before in his life, wearing a sloppy tweed jacket, messy-haired and hollow-cheeked, looking like a shell somebody had sucked dry. His eyes were wide, behind his glasses, a sort of storm cloud blue. They stared at each other, except that the other guy wasn't really staring at Bucky, but rather somewhere in the middle distance, like he could see some part of Bucky that wasn't visible to anyone else.

Bucky opened his mouth to say something, but as he did, the plates on his arm resettled, and it seemed to snap the other guy back to reality. He met Bucky's eyes for a second, the eye contact so intense it almost _burned_ somehow. His face twisted into an odd expression, something like pain, but also strangely wry. 

"I know," he said, and shouldered past Bucky into the office.


	3. i'm fat and i have sex with hot strangers

"I'm fat and I have sex with hot strangers," said Bucky.

" _What_ ," said Steve.

"I'm fat and I have sex with hot strangers," Bucky repeated. "It's the headline of this article. What the hell kind of article title is that?"

He twisted his neck to see Steve blinking at him owlishly. "What website are you _on_?" Steve asked. "I thought we both agreed that we weren't going on Reddit anymore. I mean, you said you wouldn't anymore either, after I had to stop with the thing with -- that transgender woman, and the argument, that guy that was harassing her --"

"Jesus, Steve, relax," Bucky said. "I'm not on Reddit, it's xoJane."

There was silence from Steve for a minute as he typed, and then presumably started reading the article. "How much comment karma did that whole thing net you, anyway?" Bucky asked.

Steve sighed. "I don't know. I stopped keeping track of it. People kept giving me Reddit gold, and I kept saying that I would really much rather they donated the money to charity, and then there was the guy that followed me around commenting 'internet white knight' on every comment I'd ever made --" he shook his head. "I try not to think about it."

"Whoops," Bucky said. "Sorry. Never mind me, then. Carry on."

"I don't get it," Steve said after a minute when he'd finished reading. "She's doing what she wants to do with her body, good for her, and she's not allowing society's beauty standards to dictate her self worth, but why did she have to write an article about it? It seems awfully personal."

"The thing I don't get," said Bucky, "is that honestly, dicks are a dime a dozen."

Steve gave him an incredulous look.

"I'm serious!" said Bucky. "Christ, have you even been on Tinder? It's like -- I don't know, it must be like sharks scenting blood any time a woman is on there."

"Still," Steve said, "a dime a dozen?"

"Yes, Steve," Bucky said. "It is not hard -- pun intended -- to find a willing dick in this city. Or any city. There could be literally a dick waiting right around any corner ready to fuck."

"You rode that one into the ground," Steve said.

Bucky mimicked a rimshot, complete with explosive cymbal crash. Steve gave him a sour look, and then turned back to his computer. "Wait a minute," Steve said. "This is you! Jane Austentatious, that's you, isn't it!"

"How did you figure that out?" Bucky said.

"A dime a dozen," Steve answered. He squinted suspiciously at the screen. "That's not you in the icon! Are you pretending to be a woman?"

"I'm not _pretending_ to be anything," Bucky said. "They all just assume I am. It's Jane Fonda."

"What?" Steve said.

"The picture," Bucky said. "Jane Fonda."

"'Fuck the Army' Jane Fonda?" Steve asked.

"That same one," Bucky said. Steve shook his head and got up to go make lunch, but despite whatever Steve was thinking, there was nobody on earth who could say that Bucky Barnes didn't know the value of irony.


	4. mistletoe

The mistletoe has been persona non grata all night, even with several bottles of wine and a six-pack of beer on hand, not to mention the weird shimmery liquor that Thor had brought from Asgard, which had elicited a response of "I don't know, it does make me feel a little tingly," from Rogers, and a shrug from Barnes. _Everyone_ is avoiding the mistletoe, which Tony _thought_ was unavoidable, considering it is liberally garlanding the entire entryway into the common floor; he should have known better. The Avengers are a crafty bunch, and ever since Natasha and Bruce had a close call when they almost both went through the archway at the same time, they've all been very careful to enter or exit the room one at a time.

A bunch of frickin' party poopers, is what they are. What's the point of getting drunk with a bunch of people whose lives you may or may not have saved multiple times, who may or may not have saved your life multiple times, who may or may not have seen you pee your pants a little bit when you got dropped off a building without the suit -- okay, more on that story later -- if you can't at least have a few incredibly awkward kisses between you? Weird sexual experiences are a team building exercise; Tony should know.

Which is why he can't hold in a hoot of delight when Barnes and Rogers finally do cross paths under the copious mistletoe. They both look at him, and he yells, "Mistletoe! You have do to it! You _have_ to do it, it's the law of Christmas."

They look at each other, and then back at the group again. Oh, this is going to be good. They're from the forties, and they're like lifetime bosom buddies on top of that, this is going to be the _pinnacle_ of all awkward mistletoe kisses. Tony folds his arms and waits, gleefully, because he knows that out of all of them, Steve is the one most likely to do it out of sheer stubbornness.

"Bro," says Barton, from the edge of the couch, where he's perched with a foot resting on the table and a beer in his hand. He must be talking to Barnes, because Rogers is way too square for anyone to call him 'bro.' "It's not gay, it's mistletoe."

Barnes's expression goes from 'vaguely disgruntled' to 'outright murderous.' It's actually remarkably subtle, considering all it involves is a downturn of his mouth and a slight movement of his eyebrows. Tony might pee a little right now, maybe. Accidentally. Not because he's scared. Barnes takes Roger's face in both of his hands, and leans in, and --

\-- There's _tongue_ , and Rogers slides his hands down the whole length of Barnes's back to cup his ass, and it goes on way, way longer than it needed to. 

It's not awkward at all. It's the most disappointing thing Tony has ever seen.


	5. three-sentence stories

_1\. Steve: apologies_

The worst part, of course, is that he doesn't know why he was mad in the first place; Bucky was just kissing Jenny Baker, and he had every right to - Jenny Baker with her shiny auburn hair and her big green eyes, who had filled out over the summer and come back to school looking all grown up, to match Bucky, who'd sprouted up at least four inches and broadened in the shoulders, the muscle of his arms no longer stringy as a boy's when he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up. They were just kissing, after all, and if Steve came around the corner and saw them, he had no right at all to get upset about it, or to say any of the things he had said about Bucky ruining Jenny's reputation, especially because it wasn't even really Bucky he was angry with.

It doesn't matter; Bucky's the one who says sorry first, the shadow of his long, dark eyelashes on his freckled cheeks, his mouth still red from kissing - Bucky's always the one who says sorry first.

+++

_2\. Bucky: religion_

It's ruined now, but the bones of the cathedral are still there, and standing amid the broken glass scattering the smooth marble floor, cradling his rifle, Bucky thinks that it must have been beautiful once, the kind of place that he could never have dreamed of seeing when he was a kid growing up among tenements and dirty streets in Brooklyn - and he was right, because he's only seeing it post-mortem now, with no idea of what it looked like before, when it was alive.

"What're you doing in here, Sarge," says Macauley, coming around the crumbling remains of the rectory doors to find Bucky standing in the middle of it, "I didn't take you for a churchgoing man --"

"No," says Bucky, because how could he be, when his boots have trod on mud and corpses, becoming indistinguishable from each other after a while, for months now; how could anyone be?

+++

_3\. Steve: lies_

The second he says it, he knows the jig's up, it's over, he's done; he's hardly ever even managed to convince anyone in this new world, any of these people who hardly know him as more than a uniform, to believe him when he's telling anything other than the truth - so why the hell would he ever think he could fool Bucky, who has known him since he was seven years old?

The expression on Bucky's face is one that he remembers well, the slight purse of his lips, the line that draws itself between his brows; seeing it now, in this context, Steve realizes that all those times, Bucky _knew_ , he knew and he went along with it all anyway, and --

"All right, Steve," Bucky says slowly, and Steve tries to hold his gaze but can't - it's not just the cold calm in Bucky's eyes, it's knowing he's put it there, so he looks away while Bucky continues, "If that's the way you want to play it, then; I'm not going to argue."

+++

_4\. Bucky: bullet_

The asset feels the impact but none of the accompanying pain; perhaps the asset's training has finally succeeded, after many years of failure that the asset has been assured time and time again is the asset's fault, and the asset's fault alone - due, of course, to his malfunctioning nature, which he assumes is the reason that he can rarely perform as perfectly as expected.

The asset unbuckles the straps of his tactical jacket and shrugs it off, crouching to the side and lifting the fabric of the shirt underneath. The asset pushes one finger into the hole, and it oozes blood so dark it is almost black, running down his stomach to his hip, pooling at the waistband of the asset's pants; the asset probes, probes, pushing his finger deeper and deeper until the bullet is located - when it pops free of the asset's skin, he exhales a sigh -- "ah," -- and closes his eyes, but only for a moment.

 

+++

_5\. Bucky: home_

Sometimes he plays a game with himself - everything is different now than it used to be, like he's walking through a graveyard where he knows all the names but the headstones have changed - where he leaves home and sees how far he can get without looking at his phone; it's almost like he's trying to prove something, prove he remembers, or that he existed here once before, that he was real, then.

It always ends the same way, regardless; he wanders into some bar somewhere and sits down, orders a drink, feels the burn as it goes down without the spark it can no longer light in his belly, holds the cold glass against his cheek. The idea that he's looking for something seems unavoidable; the realization that he can't get even a second of that time back, that everything has changed and will irrevocably remain changed, equally so.


	6. colin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> THIS was going to be a whole story where Bucky stole a very famous dog, and eventually Steve was meant to find out and make Bucky return the dog, but I only wrote the first part. The photo shown is really Colin. Colin is a real dog. Now you want to steal him too, don't you?

The information was there, his for the taking, and security was practically nonexistent. The place made for a terrible target, if by 'terrible' you meant 'way too easy,' which Bucky certainly did.

All it had taken was a series of e-mails routed through a proxy I.P. and the shoddiest of cover identities. He knew more at this point than he would ever have needed to know to secure the package, and he was confident that the targets had no idea they were dealing with an operative of his caliber. That they were dealing with an operative at all.

Still, he'd been careful in covering his tracks. He hadn't been trained for nothing; an alias on a passport, a haircut, colored contacts, glasses, and the polymer mesh sleeve that Tony Stark had so kindly cooked up for him would do the trick, as far as airport security was concerned. He'd gotten by with less, in the past, but he'd been less well-known then, too.

He hadn't been in Poland in a long time. The place was remote, a while outside the city by car, in the lovely green countryside. A lot of space, which seemed appropriate. He parked his rental car far enough outside the property that it wouldn't be seen, and changed out of his business suit into tactical gear in the back.

It was an easy walk with plenty of cover, and the weather wasn't even particularly cold. The security system on the building was laughably easy to disable - they had left their fingerprints all over the alarm code, and it took Bucky far less than 60 seconds to guess what it was based on process of elimination and prior knowledge of the targets.

There were more of them than he thought inside, and they all crowded around him in the dark. "Cicho!" said Bucky immediately, holding a finger to his lips. He stared at them all, ashamed to admit he couldn't tell upon first glance which one was the package he aimed to secure.  

He cleared his throat quietly, looking around the circle at all the big dark eyes. "Colin," he said finally, and one of them trotted obediently to the front. _Yes,_ thought Bucky. "Colin, siad!"

Colin sat down obediently. _Excellent,_ thought Bucky. He started to back away. "Colin," he said, "noga," and watched with pleasure as Colin followed him, out the door.

He closed it after himself, and stared for a moment in at all the rest of Colin's brothers, sisters, and other more distant relations. He could -- he could take more than one -- he should take more than one of them with them. But no, he couldn't, he'd only prepared for one, and to alter the course of the mission at this point would likely just prove disastrous.

He tucked Colin under his arm instead and carried him back to the car. Colin sat placid and obedient in the passenger seat for about half the drive, and then climbed into Bucky's lap and went to sleep.

The flight back was uneventful, aside from a little girl who wanted to see Colin, whose request Bucky begrudgingly fulfilled, half-afraid that her squeals of delight would prompt everyone else in the terminal to want to look. Thankfully, the rest of the travelers wanted nothing to do with whoever was the source of the little girl's mirth, and Colin remained unmolested for the rest of the journey.

When he got back to the tower, he let Colin out immediately and, prepared, put down a puppy pad. Colin ran around the whole apartment barking, seemingly delighted, took a longer pee than Bucky would ever assumed a dog that small was capable of, and then came over and stood in front of Bucky wagging his tail. If there was, in fact, a tail inside all that fluff.

"What's up, buddy?" said Bucky. He bent down to pick Colin up and received a great deal of sloppy dog saliva on his chin for the trouble. It wasn't time to feed him yet, so...maybe he just wanted attention.

Bucky sat on the couch and put Colin on his lap. Colin shifted obligingly when Bucky eventually lay, snuggling on Bucky's chest with his head under Bucky's chin. For a second, Bucky just looked at him and felt like his heart was about to explode. "Wait till Steve gets a load of this," he said to Colin, who yawned, his pink tongue curling up, and put his head on both of his front paws.

+++

A couple days later, Colin had settled with admirable adaptability into his new home, and Bucky decided to take him to the dog park. This was all just alarmingly easy; getting a license for his new dog, dog proofing the apartment - to be honest, there wasn't a lot to do, because Colin wasn't really big enough to jump up on anything important, and sometimes even resorted to begging to be picked up onto the couch even though he _was_ perfectly able to jump up. It was all easy. Colin fit right in, like he belonged, like he'd always been there.

He deliberately picked a time when most people with 9-5 jobs would be at work. It was best to start slow, even though he could foresee no possible problems. Colin trotted obediently beside him, at his heel, his little legs working in a flurry of movement just to keep up with Bucky's strides. 

When they got to the park, Bucky put him into a sit-stay, and Colin watched Bucky with his tongue lolling out of his mouth, grinning but obedient, until Bucky unhooked the leash, pulling a tennis ball out of his sweatshirt pocket and tossing it - whoops - halfway across the park. "Go get it!" he said to Colin, and Colin stared at him for just a second, and then was off like a shot.

This went on for about twenty minutes, until Colin got distracted by some kind of -- really weird, embarrassing-looking chihuahua mix with a lot of scraggly ear hair and bulging eyes. "Really," said Bucky, who would have hoped Colin would have better taste, but, well, he was a dog. "Colin!" he called, watching Colin's little head and ears swivel toward him. "Noga!"

Colin came running back over, tennis ball in mouth, trailed by the chihuahua. Bucky put Colin into a down-stay and then stared at the unfamiliar dog. "Sit!" he said, and the dog obediently plopped its rear end down.

"Mojo! Mojo, no!" came a male voice, followed by a body, presumably the dog's owner. "Oh my god," he said, slightly out of breath, pushing his aviators up with the hand not clutching a really large Starbucks beverage. "I am so sorry."

"It's fine," Bucky said, glancing over at the other guy.

The other guy was looking wildly between Colin and Bucky, and he was -- did his jeans have _rhinestones_ on the pockets? "Oh my _god_ ," he said. "Are you for real."

"Colin," said Bucky, "shake." Colin sat up and obediently offered a paw, and the noise that the other guy let out was _really_ high-pitched. He crouched down and shook Colin's hand and then looked with suspicion at his dog - Mojo, that must be its name.

"How did you get him to do that?" he asked, squinting up at Bucky. "I can _never_ get him to do what I say."

"Part of it's tone of voice," said Bucky lamely, and true to the other guy's word, Mojo was already up out of his sit and trying to climb all over his owner, barking wildly while Colin sat placidly looking up at Bucky. It wasn't Bucky's place to intervene, though, so he just watched the dog go apeshit on this poor guy; at least it was a friendly kind of apeshit.

"Do you _live_ around here," said the guy. "Oh my god, by the way, I'm Ryan."

"Hi," Bucky said. "James." He extended his hand to receive a very loose, casual handshake. "Yeah, I live nearby. How about you?"

"Just a couple of blocks," Ryan said, waving airily - Bucky was concerned about his beverage. "I haven't seen you here _before_."

"Yeah, we were -- going to a different park before," Bucky said. "Too many big dogs, though, decided to try here instead."

"God _bless_ those big dogs," said Ryan fervently, staring at Bucky. Bucky felt like Ryan could somehow see his nipples through his sweatshirt or something; he felt like he was a piece of meat being assessed. "I can't believe Mojo is getting along with him, he usually just chases everyone away."

"Really," Bucky said. "That's too bad. Well, Colin and I better get going. It was nice to meet you, maybe we'll see you again.'

Colin had looked attentively to Bucky as soon as he heard his name, and Bucky gestured to him to heel, which he did immediately, and even the other dog was watching. "Be good, Mojo," Bucky said, watching Mojo's tail wave wildly in the air. "See you later."

"Bye," said Ryan, and then as Bucky was walking away, again, "Oh my _god._ "

+++

Bucky stood up immediately as he heard the front door open, tucking Colin under his arm. It could only be Steve, and in fact, it was; he smiled hugely at Bucky when he saw him, setting his duffel bags down on either side of himself and unhooking the shield from his back to hang on the wall. "You got a haircut," he said, coming toward Bucky, who set Colin down; Colin immediately ran over to Steve, barking, and Steve said, "You got a _dog_?"

"His name's Colin," said Bucky. Steve crouched down, and Colin put his front paws on Steve's knees, licking Steve's chin as soon as it was within reach. 

"Gosh, he's -- awfully cute," said Steve, petting Colin carefully and then looking at Bucky.

"What?" said Bucky. "You like dogs - I know you do - I like dogs, I got a dog."

"No, that's fine, it's great," Steve said, picking Colin up so he could look at him more closely. "I guess I just expected -- something bigger. A German Shepherd or something."

Well, that would be more true to character, but -- "I don't know," Bucky said. "He called to me, when I saw him. Look at his face."

"Yeah," Steve said, "I can see that. He's _really_ cute. What did you say his name was?"

"Colin," Bucky said; Colin's head swiveled toward him for a moment when he heard his name, and then he went back to staring at Steve adoringly. He might not have good taste in other dogs, Bucky thought, but at least he had good taste in people. 

Steve set Colin down eventually, and grabbed one of his bags. Bucky got the other, following Steve into the bedroom so he could help unpack. "How was the mission?" he asked.

"Things got a little dicey when we realized we'd been supplied with the wrong set of building schematics," Steve said, unzipping his bag. "But we made the best of it."

"Yeah, like you even looked at the building schematics before barreling in there," Bucky replied, watching Colin run around Steve's feet, try to jump up on the bed, sniff at Steve's duffel bag. 

"I did, thank you very much," Steve said, tossing a dirty shirt at Bucky's face and then getting distracted by Colin as Colin tried to climb into his bag. "Hey little guy, what're you doing?" He glanced at Bucky. "Does he know commands?"

"Oh yeah," Bucky said. "He does all the basics and he's got some tricks too. Most of it's in Polish, though. I've been trying to switch him to English a little bit, but I don't know how much luck we're going to have with that. He has some hand signals, too, though, and those are the same in any language."

"Polish?" Steve asked, patting Colin.

"Yeah," Bucky said. "His previous owner, or something." He paused, and then, "Colin, shake."

Colin sat down obediently and offered one of his front paws to Steve. Steve looked _delighted._ The level of cute was just about high enough to give a person a heart attack.


	7. mr. president

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House of Cards AU. Written before Season 3 aired, not that it matters.

"I want to meet the man responsible for this," said Francis. His fingertips touched the glossy photographs spread across the table. His heart was beating slightly faster than usual, a fact which he noted with a vague, distant sense of interest.

"I'm afraid that's not possible, sir," said the Secretary General. "He's part of a top secret program, and the identities of the agents are completely blackballed --"

"I don't care," Francis said. "Get him here."

"Mr. President," said the Secretary General. All eyes were on Francis; they had all turned in their seats to gawp at him, as if they weren't used to this by now. "For reasons of plausible deniability _alone_ I can't allow that, not to mention --"

"I said--" There had been a time in Francis's life when he had been loathe to raise his voice; it wasn't genteel, dignified -- but he had long since realized that genteel and dignified had nothing at all to do with politics, especially at this level, "Get him here."

He stood up and walked out of the situation room without another word. Ten minutes later, the Secretary General had someone standing in the doorway of the oval office. "We'll have him here in an hour, sir," she said.

"Very good," Francis replied.

The man, when they brought him in, seemed lost. He walked with a familiar gait, his posture that of a military man who had forgotten his body was good for anything other than killing, but his gaze was vacant when he looked around, or slightly confused. He was unkempt, too -- long, stringy dark hair and an uneven beard, ill-fitting tactical gear that was wildly out-of-place among the dress uniforms and smart suits of the White House.

"He'll do anything he's ordered to, sir," said the handler who'd come along with him, an older, serious-looking man.

Francis stepped closer. The soldier stood at attention but seemed incapable of meeting Francis's eyes; his gaze was somewhere in the middle distance. "Give us a moment," he said to the room at large.

"Mr. President, I don't know if that's wise," said the Secretary General.

"No?" Francis asked coldly. "You just told me he'll do anything he's ordered to. It stands to reason I'll be quite safe with him."

The oval office emptied, as it always did, very quickly. "Look at me," Francis said to the soldier, and was startled by the suddenness of the soldier's gaze. His eyes were blue, a sort of icy, grayish blue. 

Francis picked up the folder, and took out one of the photographs. "I understand you did this," he said, showing it to the soldier.

"Yes, sir," the soldier said, looking at the image, the bodies sprawled out, the blood, and then back at Francis.

"This is beautiful work," Francis murmured, running a finger over the edge of the paper. 

The soldier stared at him, as if he was unused to receiving compliments, and then, when Francis raised his eyebrows, said slowly, "Thank you, sir."

"Thank _you_ ," Francis said, tucking the photograph back into the folder and looking at the soldier. He was taller than Francis, of course, by a good three inches, and under the beard, Francis had a feeling, quite handsome. "They said you'd do whatever I ordered you to," he commented casually, shuffling through the folder until he found his favorite of the photographs, pulling that one out next.

"Yes, sir," the soldier said.

"Good." Francis crumpled up the photograph until it was the smallest ball he could manage. "I want you to eat this. Chew it, swallow it. You understand?"

"Yes, sir," the soldier said. He opened his mouth wide, and something dark and warm curled up in the pit of Francis's stomach. He smiled at the soldier, and put the ball of paper in the soldier's mouth.

There was no hesitation. A thing of beauty, indeed. " _Very_ good," Francis said. It _had_ to be uncomfortable, chewing all that paper without even any water, and it certainly couldn't taste good. But the soldier's gaze stayed fixed straight ahead and he opened his mouth again when he was done, showing Francis his tongue and empty palate.

"How would you like to come work for me," Francis said, and it wasn't really a question. He leaned back and pressed the button on his desk for the intercom. "Send his handler back in here, please," he said.

The handler came back in, and Francis sat at his desk, opening his jacket. "Take him and get him cleaned up," he said. "Give him a haircut and a shave and get him a suit. I want him on my personal detail."

Meechum wouldn't be happy, but if there was one thing this wasn't about, it was Meechum.


	8. mr. president II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> House of Cards AU. Written before Season 3 aired, not that it matters.

Claire found them upstairs; James was knelt on the floor, picking up what looked to be an entire deck of cards that appeared to have flown out of Frank's hands, scattered everywhere. She didn't say anything, but gave Francis a look sharp enough to cut a lesser man, and retreated to her bedroom, pulling the door shut tight behind her.

James's gaze followed her. His right hand was full of cards, and in his left he held the ace of hearts, waiting to be added to the deck. When the door clicked shut, he looked back at Francis, his eyebrows quirking slightly. He spoke so little, but Francis had by now learned to read the nuances of his expression quite well. He was asking for reassurance.

"Come over here," Francis said, and James put the half-a-deck of cards on the table and scooted forward, looking up at Francis for a moment before leaning forward and resting his cheek against Francis's knee. 

Francis twined his fingers into James's hair. "It's all right," he said. "Don't worry about her. She'll come around, she always does." He watched James's eyes flutter closed and his mouth go a little slack, pressing his fingers against James's scalp. "You haven't done anything wrong. You've been good. Very good."

James's mouth shaped the words silently, an echo: _Very good._

Francis felt himself smile." That's right," he said, taking James's chin and tilting James's face back up toward him. James's eyes opened again and he looked at Francis with an expression that was familiar but not nearly as familiar as Francis wished for in his heart of hearts -- adoration. Francis said, "You've been a _very_ good boy, James."


	9. Steve's OkCupid profile, as written by Bucky

**My self-summary**

JUST A SMALL-TOWN GIRL…. LIVIN IN A LONELY WORLD

**What I'm doing with my life**

Living in the past, mostly. Knocking people out using my head as a weapon. Jumping off tall objects without a parachute sometimes. Flexing. Posing in front of national monuments, flexing. The rest of the time I just watch Netflix.

**I'm really good at**

Knocking people out using my head as a weapon. 

**The first things people usually notice about me**

1\. My biceps  
2\. I'm Captain America  
3\. Me knocking them out using my head as a weapon.

**Favorite books, movies, tv shows, music, and food**

I don't have any of these things because I'm too busy living in the past. Except _House of Cards_ , I do really like _House of Cards_. Kevin Spacey's jowly old man face and his cold dead stare give me a raging hard-on.

**The six things I could never do without**  
1\. My biceps  
2\. My head - I use it as a weapon.  
3\. Netflix  
4\. The super serum! Ha ha.  
5\. My shield.  
6\. My best friend in the whole world, the greatest guy I've ever met, also the sexiest.

**I spend a lot of time thinking about**

Knocking people out using my head as a weapon. Also injustice.

**On a typical Friday night I am**

In bed by 9pm because I'm actually 95 and a grandpa.

**You should message me if**

Endangering your life, possibly getting knocked out by my head, jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and/or watching me shiver and pop a woody as Kevin Spacey monologues sounds like your idea of a sweet-ass time. 

**The most private thing I'm willing to admit**

My penis curves to the left and one of my balls is a little bit bigger than the other. But trust me, once you see it you won't care at all.


	10. TriviaCrack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Like Bucky, I am undefeated in the world of TriviaCrack, and also Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.

"How do you know all of these sports questions?" Steve shouted from the other room, outraged. "I don't -- who is LeBron James? You didn't seriously watch all of the championship games from the last seventy years, did you?"

"Well," Bucky said, putting his feet up against the arm of the couch, "I get pretty bored."

There was silence from Steve, and when Bucky looked over the couch back, Steve was just staring at him incredulously. Bucky snorted. "I'm kidding," he said. "It's just memorization, I'm good at the names. It's the science questions you ought to be ashamed of."

"I haven't taken science classes in -- seventy-five years!" Steve said. "Some of this stuff wasn't even _invented_ when we were in school! And there are way too many Harry Potter questions."

"I know you read all those books," Bucky said coolly. "It's not my fault your memory retention is terrible. You just need to pay attention."

Steve made a garbled noise of frustration, and Bucky's Facebook page notified him that it was his turn. The last 37 games were all some variation on "6-2" "6-1" or "6-0," all in Bucky's favor. Bucky whizzed through the first three trivia sections before one of the god damn Harry Potter questions got him. 

"You're _cheating_ ," said Steve.

Bucky sat up, putting his laptop on the table ,and turned slowly to face Steve. By this point he knew Steve wasn't actually suggesting that he was cheating, but there was a predictable way that this played out: Steve accused Bucky of foul play, Bucky got indignant, they wrestled around a little bit, and then they inevitably ended up having sex. "You're cheating" had become Steve's way -- he probably thought it was admirably subtle -- of saying he was tired of getting his ass whooped in trivia and wanted a piece of Bucky's ass instead.

All in all, Bucky was inclined to play along with that.


	11. aesthetics

"I mean, he wasn't wrong," Bucky said.

"You really think Thor's the best-looking Avenger?" Steve asked, crestfallen.

"Well, no," Bucky replied. "Obviously I think you're the best-looking, Steve, you moron. But objectively, yeah, I think Thor is the most classically handsome. I mean, you've got a nose that could put somebody's eye out if they're not watching for it."

"What about you?" Steve said. "Buck, you're -- I think you're the most beautiful person I've --"

"Stop," Bucky said, "Steve, stop. I have the face of a baby. I have no body fat and I still manage to have a double chin. I appreciate it, you're sweet, but I got nothing on Thor from the average person's point of view."

"Different people have different tastes," Steve answered grouchily. Bucky resigned himself to not getting any sex tonight.


	12. rubber duck

He stared at it, bobbing in the water. It was so innocuous, maybe the most innocuous thing he could remember seeing. Almost kind of absurd in a way, especially when you started to think about the particulars: One single grown man inhabited this apartment, or he had until he’d convinced Bucky to come back here with him. Why the hell would Steve have a plastic bath toy in the first place? Maybe it had been given to him, as a gift, or a joke, something like that. Something normal people did.

The water had gone past lukewarm and straight on to chilly. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there. The cold water lapping against his knees and shoulders was more familiar than it had been when it was warm. It had gone dirty, first pinkish and then brown, as he’d cleaned himself off. He knew how to do that. He had to know how to do it. He wouldn’t have been very good on long-term missions if he couldn’t.

Everything hurt, but everything almost always hurt. It was some combination of physical violence and withdrawal from whatever they’d been pumping through his system to keep him cooperative and on an even keel in terms of moods. Sometimes he had these dreams, and in the dreams he was screaming until his throat was raw and all the blood vessels in his eyes burst, or sobbing until he puked. They had to be memories – he didn’t have any dreams that weren’t memories – but he couldn’t really remember ever feeling anything that strongly.

“Bucky?” said a voice from outside the door, and he jerked a little, knocking his left arm against the side of the tub with a clank.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Sorry to have to ask this,” Steve said; he must be right outside, his face practically pressed up against the wood of the door. “Are you okay? It’s been a while.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “You can come in if you want. I’m not shy.”

There was a pause, where he could somehow practically picture Steve hesitating, even though he barely had enough coherent memories of Steve to count on both hands, and then the door opened. Steve came in, and sat down on the toilet. They stared at each other for a minute, awkward, and then Steve came forward and bent down, reached to test the water. “It’s cold,” he said.

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “It doesn’t bother me.” He pushed the floating duck over toward Steve on the water. “Why do you have that?”

“Oh,” Steve said. “I don’t know. I saw it. I thought it was funny. They were – Natasha, mostly – they were always telling me I needed to get some stuff. To make this place more like a home.”

“What is it?” said Bucky.

“It’s a rubber duck,” said Steve. “This artist designed them, and then with all the manufacturing technology they developed for the war, they made millions and millions of them. It was – in the late 40s. So it was after –” he trailed off, apparently unsure how to finish the sentence.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Bucky said. Steve gave him a sharp look, questioning, and it was weird, how he remembered that about Steve, too, but all of the events from the time when he’d actually known Steve played like an out-of-focus film reel in his head, with all of the details obscured.

“What’s a relief?” Steve asked.

“Knowing it happened after I died,” said Bucky. “So it’s not there for me to remember. I thought I forgot that too.”


	13. doll

“It’s a game,” said his handler, bending down so that her face was directly in front of his. “And if you don’t win, I’m going to be very disappointed. You don’t want to disappoint me, do you?”

He shook his head, although considering he was shaking all over, he wasn’t sure how she could tell the difference. He always shook for an hour or so after they brought him out of the ice. It was something he was fairly certain he wasn’t meant to remember, and they treated it as an inconvenience, always surprised it was still happening.

“Good,” said his handler, resting her hand on top of his head, his wet hair. She had brown eyes, brown hair. She was wearing lipstick, which seemed incongruous to the situation. He couldn’t remember her name. “I’m going to leave you alone so you can get ahold of yourself. And then some technicians will come in, and when they do, you’re going to be a doll.”

He looked at her blankly. “You know what a doll is, right?” she asked, and when he nodded, “you know what dolls do?”

He shook his head, confused, and she sighed, which sent a spear of something cold spiraling down into his gut. “You’re going to stay very still,” she said. “You don’t move unless they move you, and if they move you, you let them. You don’t make a sound. It’s of the utmost importance that you do this.”

“I thought you said it was a game,” he managed, hoarse.

“I’m starting to think the individuals who suggested I was letting you get away with too much may be right,” she said, and he snapped his mouth closed. “It _is_ a game, but if you can’t even perform well in a game, how on earth do you think they’ll ever find you fit for field duty?” She patted the top of his head, and then took hold of his chin. Her voice was very quiet. “And you know what happens to weapons when they’re not good for field duty anymore, don’t you?”

He nodded. “Yes,” he whispered.

“And you don’t want to be decommissioned, do you?” she asked, her red fingernail stroking at the corner of his mouth.

“No,” he said. Then, “Am I allowed to breathe?”

“Well, dolls don’t breathe, do they?” she asked, straightening up again, smoothing her hands down her skirt. “I suppose you’ll have to, though; the procedure will be far too long for you to hold your breath the entire time, and they wouldn’t like it if you passed out. And you’ll have to blink, too, I suppose. I suggest you do your best not to let them see.”

“Acknowledged,” he said.

She was looking with disgust at the wet mark the hand which had been sitting on his hair had left behind on her grey skirt. “Well, then,” she said. “I’ll be watching.” She picked up her clipboard and turned neatly, her fashionable green pumps clicking against the concrete floor as she exited the room.

He sat and waited. The tremors slowed and then stopped, and then he realized he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. Should he lie down? Assume the posture of something limp and pliant? Some dolls could sit, couldn’t they? He should have clarified with his handler.

The door opened, and three technicians came in, wheeling with them a cart of medical equipment. The soldier went very still immediately, eyes wide open, mouth and limbs slack. “Are they sure it’s safe for us to be in here?” one of the technicians asked the others. “I saw the footage from the last time they attempted this; he barely _touched_ Dr. Narayanan and he broke his orbital bone and  his jaw.”

“Thompson said she gave him an order,” said another one of the techs, seeming much less concerned. “She said he’d be unresponsive until the procedure was over. Come on, help me get the gown off him.”

They surrounded him and slid the hospital gown down, over his shoulders. He was cooperative. He let them move his arms and head whenever they wanted. “God, he’s _heavy,_ though,” said one of the techs, the soldier’s left arm resting across his shoulder as he started up a piece of computer equipment and then held it over the soldier’s arm, scanning. “She could have told him to retain a little bit of muscle tone.”

The third tech, who had until now been silent, snapped on a pair of latex surgical gloves and a mask. “Let’s get started,” he said. “I don’t want to be wasting time until he decides the order is no longer applicable, no matter what Thompson says.”

They backed away for a moment and concentrated in a cluster behind the soldier’s back, where he couldn’t see them without turning his head, so he couldn’t see them at all. He focused on trying not to breathe visibly, and was grateful for the chance to blink, since they weren’t looking at his face. There was a hot slice of pain. He stayed very still. Another, deeper. “Move the monitor closer,” said the third tech. “I need to be able to see what I’m doing here.”

His fingers clenched a little, involuntarily, where they rested next to his leg. He felt a stab of fear. “There we go, that’s what we’re looking for,” said one of the techs. “Come here, come over here and help me with this.” Fingers, prodding some more, and then the intense ripping feeling as they peeled the skin away from around his shoulder. One of them peered around to look at him, and he kept his eyes wide open and his expression blank, even as he could feel instinctive tears starting up in the corners of his eyes. “So far so good,” said the tech.

The pain should have made it easier to concentrate, but instead made it harder. His hand, especially, wanted to tremble. After a while, he began to sweat. And he had to clench his jaw, the deeper they went, trying to isolate the cluster of nerve and muscle, to keep from making noise. Every so often one of them would look at him, and he’d have to be careful to relax his face, to keep his eyes open. But his handler was always watching. She had said she would be. He wasn’t doing a very good job.

“No wonder they’re having problems with the response time,” said the first tech. “It’s full of scar tissue in here. Whoever put this thing on him the first time around must not have had a lot of foresight.”

“They probably weren’t expecting him to last this long,” said the third tech. All three of them laughed. In the middle of the laughter, one of them shifted slightly, and the pain it sent shooting up through the soldier’s shoulder and neck was so incredible it could almost be called radiant. His mouth fell open. He whimpered.

They all froze, backing away, and the three of them came around to his front side to look at him. He froze too, though he was breathing heavily, too heavily to disguise, and they had to be able to see he was sweating. They stood looking at him for what felt like forever, and it was all he could do to stay still, not to allow his fingers to twitch or his full, stinging eyes to slip closed.

“I think it’s okay,” said the second tech eventually. “The order’s still in effect. Let’s finish this up, come on.”

Mercifully, he lost track of time, and when he came back to himself they were sterilizing and bandaging the wound. “I hope they’re not expecting him to be mission ready tonight,” said one of the techs. “Even with his healing factor this is going to take at least a week to heal.”

“Don’t they usually want him for a mission when they defrost him?” one of the others replied absently. The soldier could see him sterilizing equipment in his peripheral vision.

“I don’t know,” said the third. “That’s out of our pay grade. Come on, let’s lay him down. In this state he’s more likely to collapse than do it voluntarily, and I’d rather not have him damage himself on our watch.” There was the sound of surgical gloves being stripped off, and then hands on his shoulders, pushing him down, even though lying on the wound made it hurt more. “His eyes aren’t even focused,” said the tech, looking down at him.

“Maybe nobody’s home,” said the second tech. “That would be nice for him, wouldn’t it?”

The other two looked sharply at him. “Don’t get caught saying something like that,” said the first tech. “Let’s just get out of here and get Thompson back in, and hope that whatever she reports to the boss is good. He’s not the disposable one in this situation.”

They left, and the soldier drifted blearily between here and away, somewhere where the pain was only distant. He stayed limp and unmoving; he hadn’t been ordered otherwise, after all. For a moment he thought he might fall asleep, but then he heard the sound of his handler’s heels clicking down the hall toward him, and the door opened to let her in.

She came over and looked at him, turning him half onto his side so she could examine the dressings. “I _do_ hope they got what they needed,” she said, more to herself, the soldier assumed, than to him. “They certainly took their time.”

She came around to his front again and said, “The game is over now.” He took it to mean that she meant she wanted him to sit up, so he did, avoiding putting weight on his left arm. “Now, that won’t do,” she said. “I know you’re not that weak. Try again.”

He lay back down, and sat up again, this time with his weight on both arms. “Better,” she said. “Would you like to tell me how you think you did?”

He shook his head. “Now, how am I supposed to know what that means?” she asked. “Either you don’t want to tell me, or you think you’ve done poorly, but I’d like you to stop acting like a dumb animal and answer me.”

“Bad,” he said. “I did bad.”

She sighed. “Yes, I’m afraid you did,” she said. “You knew I was watching the whole time, but there you were, making all those faces, moving your fingers around.” She shook her head. “And what kind of doll just goes making noises, out of nowhere?”

“No doll,” he said. “I performed poorly.”

“Yes, you did,” she answered. “And I’m afraid I’m going to have to report that. You weren’t a very good doll at all.” She patted the top of his head, proprietary.

“Do I have a mission?” he asked. Maybe he could – he could make it up, somehow. He could perform perfectly on the mission, and they’d see he was capable, he was ready –

“Of course you do,” she said. “You’re going to be deployed, and you will complete your mission, and I expect that you will perform to the best of your abilities. It’s just that it seems your abilities aren’t quite what I imagined them to be.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “I thought we had given you enough training, but perhaps not! When you return from your mission, we’ll simply have to spend some time making sure that you’re better able to follow orders.”

She backed away from him, smiling, and turned to leave. Her fingers rested lightly on the door handle. “I think when we’re finished,” she said to him brightly, “you’ll be a _very_ good doll.”


	14. morbid dreams

The first thing he became aware of was the sounds – wet, slick sounds, coming from the other room. He ran a hand over his face and got up. It was dark, but he never had much trouble seeing in the dark anymore, just the misplaced feeling that he _should_ be seeing less.

Sometimes the hallway seemed longer in the dark, too, and it brought up some kind of memory of walking down a long, narrow corridor, one without windows and with only uncertainty at the end. He’d never been able to figure out if that memory was real – and if so, where the corridor was, or what he’d been doing there – or if it was something he’d imagined, that had become real only through the unreliability of memory. It didn’t matter, though: If there was anything he’d learned the past few months, this past year, the past several years of his life, it was that there was no hard line between the two. If you believed something long enough, it became real to you, whether or not it had actually happened.

The door to Bucky’s room was cracked open about six inches. He put his hand on it and hesitated for half a second, but Bucky had always been pretty clear that if the door was open, Steve was welcome to come in. He didn’t know what he was expecting when he opened the door, but it was as dark in the room as it had been in the hall, and Bucky was at the far end, bent over something –

For a moment he didn’t know what he was seeing. He turned on the light, fumbling blindly along the wall for the switch, and Bucky paused for a moment, but didn’t turn to look at him.

It reminded him of the zoo. He had gone to the zoo as part of some kind of goodwill publicity tour after the Chitauri invasion. They had pulled out all the stops, showing off for him; they’d let him hold a tiger cub, and see the baby panda in the nursery, and he had been so profoundly uncomfortable with all the favors and the attention but he’d tried his best not to let it show. And then they had taken him out while they fed the lions, and he had stood there watching the lions rip apart the carcass of – whatever it had been, he couldn’t remember that part – and it was horrifying, but he couldn’t make himself look away. He had watched every second of it.

Bucky did stop eventually, turning his head, but only enough that Steve could see his profile. “Easier to dispose of it this way,” he said to Steve, conversationally. “If it’s in pieces.”

Steve didn’t say anything, and Bucky got off his knees and got to his feet. When he turned to face Steve, his whole front was just covered in it. It was so dark it was almost black, and Steve knew from experience that meant there was a lot. Both of Bucky’s hands, painted red up to the elbow. A splatter of it, licking up his neck, to kiss the underside of his chin. He wiped the back of his metal hand against his face, and the blood smeared there too, across his mouth. His hair was messy, loose, like he hadn’t brushed it today.

He came toward Steve, and Steve stood there, frozen. He couldn’t tell who it was. There was so much blood, and Bucky was partially blocking his view. At first he thought – Rumlow, or maybe Rollins. Then he looked again and thought _Nick._ And then again, it didn’t look like a man at all, and he had this brief insane thought, _not Peggy!_ but it wasn’t Peggy, it was too young – Natasha – or, the hair was dark – Maria Hill – or – Sharon –

“Hey,” said Bucky. Steve looked at him. He was so calm. His eyes were so placid. He took both of Steve’s hands in his own, and then, when Steve pulled away, put his hands on Steve’s face. The scent of copper was so overwhelming that Steve could practically taste it. “Hey, what is it, Steve?”

Steve couldn’t find the words. He shook his head, and perversely, Bucky broke into a grin. A big, wide, bright grin, just like how he used to smile before. “It’s okay,” Bucky said. “Steve, it’s what I’m _supposed_ to do.”

He woke up.

He wasn’t sweating. He wasn’t even really breathing hard. He got out of bed, grabbed his water glass from the nightstand, and went out into the hallway. A moving blue glow reflected on the wall, which meant that the TV was on; he went into the living room and Bucky was sitting there, still in his running tights and t-shirt from earlier, barefoot, watching the news on mute with closed captioning turned on. Except when Steve got a better look, he could see that Bucky wasn’t really watching it. He had that absent expression.

He went into the kitchen and filled up his water. The sound of the tap brought Bucky back to the present – Steve saw his posture change from the corner of his eye, as he sat up a little straighter and ran his hand through his hair. Shorter than it had been in the dream. He looked up at Steve curiously when Steve came back into the room, and after a moment, Steve sat down next to him.

“Hey,” said Bucky. They watched the pictures move across the screen in silence for a few minutes. Steve held onto his water glass. Eventually he became aware that Bucky was only half-watching the TV, now, and the other half was watching Steve.

He didn’t try to hide it, when Steve turned to look at him. He was frowning a little bit, an expression it seemed his face had had a lot of practice with in the many years of his absence.

He said, “Hey, what is it, Steve?”


	15. appropriate combat attire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For [G!](http://peelace.co.vu/)

Bucky gave himself a final once-over, shook his head, and hammered the _up_ button on the elevator. Everybody else was waiting for him on the roof already; ten minutes ago he'd gotten a text from Natasha that said "the engines are running," while he was still trying to figure out where all the buckles and straps were meant to go.

The engines _were_ running, but the ramp was still down. Natasha and Steve were both sitting there with their arms crossed, clearly bored, and Clint was on his phone playing Candy Crush in the pilot's seat. "Hi," said Bucky. "Sorry I'm late, I -- uh, new outfit."

Both of them stared at him. "Wow," said Natasha. "Nice legs." Steve didn't say anything, his mouth slightly open. Clint spun the pilot's seat around for about half a second, looked at Bucky, and immediately turned it back around, giving a series of wheezes that were clearly an attempt not to laugh.

"I know," Bucky said darkly, sitting down and buckling himself in. He'd worked up the slightest bit of a sweat trying to figure the contraption out, and his bare thighs stuck to the leather of the seat. 

"Where on earth did you get that," said Natasha. "Wait, wait -- don't tell me -- Coulson."

"He said it like he was doing me a favor," Bucky said, trying to pull the hem of the shorts down where they'd ridden up impossibly further when he sat. "And it's not like I really have any gear left over from -- you know."

"You look like a cross between a teenage sidekick in a superhero movie meant to appeal to pedophiles and a fetish model," said Natasha. "I think you have some of those straps crooked."

"They don't even _do_ anything," Bucky said. "Other than take fifteen minutes to buckle up. Maybe it's like those dresses you couldn't get in or out of by yourself, or in a hurry. Like a chastity device or something." He paused, yanking on the legs of the shorts again. "Although if that's the case I don't know why he'd give me a pair of shorts where the tip of my dick is in danger of poking out every time I make a wrong move."

"Or is it a right move?" said Natasha. "He got Steve too, you know."

"What?" Bucky asked, looking over at Steve, who was staring straight ahead. Steve glanced over for half a second and then immediately looked away again, his ears deepening from pink to red.

"He made Steve a suit too," Natasha said. "It was so ugly. I think the whole thing was made of spandex and plastic."

"It was very tight," Steve said.

"The only part that looked good was the ass," Natasha said. Steve looked at her, affronted, and she shrugged. "I'm just saying, Rogers. I'm starting to sense a pattern here."

"Right, I don't want to think about that," said Bucky. "Can we talk about the mission instead?"

+++

An hour later Clint was putting the jet down; Tony and Sam were already outside, doing aerial recon. The mercenaries had set up in a couple of abandoned office buildings, and of course they had the high ground. But overall it should be pretty straightforward: get in, get the hostages, get out.

"Barnes," said Natasha, as Bucky bent down at the bottom of the ramp to tighten one of the buckles on his left boot. He glanced back at her, questioning. "I just want you to know that your ass is out right now."

Bucky reached back to check. She was right. "God dammit," he said, pulling the shorts down. 

Next to him, Steve looked faintly woozy. "Are you okay?" Bucky asked, clapping Steve on the shoulder.

"I'm fine," Steve said, drumming his fingers rapidly against the edge of his shield. "I'm great."

+++

The building exploded. " _What the fuck, Rogers?!_ " Clint shouted in Bucky's earpiece, crackling with static. Bucky ducked, covering his head to avoid flying pieces of concrete. Steve crab walked over and held the shield over them both. He still seemed weirdly dazed.

"Get it together, Cap!" hissed Natasha, hanging out of a window as Sam swung by to pick her up. They'd already gotten the hostages out, the whole thing was almost over, but it had abruptly gone sideways on the way out when Steve had apparently failed to notice that he was walking directly into a tripwire.

"Come on," Steve said to Bucky, grabbing him by the arm, shield still held up to cover them both from shrapnel and debris. "Let's get the hell out of here."

Steve sat with his arms folded and a thunderous frown on his face the entire way back, and didn't say a word. When they got home, he went to take a shower and then went straight to his room. The door was open, but when Bucky peered in, he had his headphones on and his sketchbook out, and clearly didn't want to be disturbed.

It bothered Bucky. Steve could be reckless, sure, but he wasn't _sloppy._ They'd spotted the tripwire on the way in, they'd known it was there, and Steve had set it off anyway. He got out his computer and took it into the kitchen, making himself a smoothie and sitting down to e-mail Natasha. Was there surveillance footage from the operation? Would she send it to him?

The files came through less than a minute later and Bucky tabbed through them until he found the view he wanted, then double-clicked. He winced; the outfit Coulson had given him was pretty embarrassing even in surveillance footage. But the longer he watched, waiting for the moment when Steve screwed up, the more it seemed like Steve was well and truly distracted.

It was toward the end of the file. Bucky stepped over the tripwire, gun held out in front of him, and gestured to Steve to come forward. Steve started walking, but he wasn't looking at the ground, or his surroundings, or any of it. He was staring right at Bucky's ass.

Bucky paused the video right at the moment Steve tripped over the wire. He made a screenshot and printed it out on a full sheet of 8.5"x11" paper. He closed the laptop and walked back to Steve's room. He rapped on the doorframe with his metal knuckles and Steve looked up, frowning. 

Steve took the headphones off. "What?"

"So I'm not going to wear that again on a mission," Bucky said. "Ever." He marched in and deposited the printout on the open pages of Steve's sketchbook. Steve's eyes got huge, and he turned bright red. "I don't want to endanger anyone's life because of my attire choices," Bucky added, dryly.

Steve opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, and then closed it again, still staring at the printout. "I'm thinking I might have to have some words with Director Couson about it," Bucky said, and Steve did glance up at him then. "It's not exactly appropriate combat gear."

"No," said Steve. "I guess not."

"I'm not getting rid of it, though," Bucky said. "Actually, I was thinking I might keep it around." He picked up Steve's sketchbook, closed it, and then sat down right in Steve's lap. Steve stared, his hands hovering in the air like he didn't know what to do. Bucky grabbed both of Steve's hands and put them firmly on his hips. "Not for combat, though," said Bucky. "But for…other purposes."


	16. B average

It's almost a relief when they don't use Bucky's on-call shift that night. Not to say he doesn't need the money - god knows he needs the money, even if it's only five hours of work - but what he needs more is a chance to sit down for a few minutes and let his brain catch up with his body. And he also needs to study for his Statistics midterm.

Stevie has Figure Painting in the evenings on Thursday, but when Bucky gets back to the apartment, the door to Stevie's room is slightly open, and when he peers in he sees the telltale tangled mound of blankets on her bed that means she's home. He tries to back out of the doorway without waking her, but the floor creaks, the blankets shift, and her head peeks out the top of the mess. She sits up, squints in Bucky's direction, and fumbles for her glasses. "I thought you were working tonight," she says.

"It was an on-call," Bucky says. "They didn't need me. What about your class?"

"I feel like crap." She slides back down into the blankets, putting both hands on her face, skinny elbows sticking up into the air. "I really didn't want -- I thought I'd be awake by the time you came home so you wouldn't know."

"Steve," Bucky says, "don't be stupid, come on. If you're sick you're sick." He doesn't say, _if you're sick again,_ because he knows she doesn't need the reminder. She's been under the weather in one way or another for practically a decade now. "Is it gonna be okay with the grades, though?"

"I mean, I filed that doctor's note with the dean of students at the beginning of the year," Stevie says, her voice muffled. "They can't discriminate against me for being chronically ill if it's been properly documented, or so the dean said."

"Yeah, Stevie," Bucky says. "You sound very comforted by that."

Stevie groans. "I'm so behind," she says. "I'm so far behind, and I'm so fucking sick of feeling like shit ninety percent of the days of my life. Just once I'd like to have a day where I don't wake up with a headache or get so winded I feel like I'm gonna pass out just walking to the train. I just want to paint and I can't even do that, Buck."

"I know," Bucky says, even though he doesn't really know. "You want me to let you go back to sleep?"

"I hate it when I get like this," Stevie says to the ceiling. "I hate feeling sorry for myself. I should never say any of this out loud."

Bucky goes over and stands by her, looking down at her pale face and unruly bedhead where it sticks out of the mountain of blankets. "Steve, it's okay," he says. "You don't need to pretend you don't have it rough on my behalf. You have to let it out sometimes."

For about a solid minute she stares up at him with those fierce blue eyes, and then she looks away. As soon as she breaks the gaze, it changes her; when she's looking directly at you, it's impossible not to be entrapped by her strength of will. But as soon as she's not, the rest becomes more apparent: the dark veins on her eyelids, the circles beneath her eyes. "Just get some rest," says Bucky. "We can talk about it when you wake up, if you want."

They don't really, of course; Steve wanders out into the living room a couple of hours later in a t-shirt and sweatpants, and Bucky makes her tomato soup and grilled cheese. He sits in silence with his Stats textbook and notes while she eats, and when he looks up, she's staring over at the half-finished painting sitting in the corner of the room with her palette and paints beside it. 

"I'm worried I'm going to lose my scholarship," she says. "I have to maintain a B average and that means I can't be late on any of my assignments in any of my classes for the rest of the semester." She falls silent again.

There are a lot of things Bucky could say, and all of them useless: Stevie can't take a semester off, because if she does, her student loans and scholarship won't pay for the costs of living. There's no way she could get a job that pays enough to cover rent, even with Bucky buying 80% of the groceries. Even with the doctor's note excusing her absences, she still has to turn in her assignments. He looks across the table at her, the sharp line of her chin and nose, her downcast eyes.

She meets Bucky's eyes for an instant and then her gaze darts away again. "It'll be okay," she says. "I'll figure it out."

"You know if there's anything I can do," Bucky says. "Anything at all."

"I know, Bucky," Stevie replies, scrubbing her hands through her short hair, making it stick up even worse than it already is. "But I don't want you to have to."

"I don't have to," Bucky said. "I want to. Big difference."

"Thanks for supper," Stevie says. She gets up and goes to the painting for a second, standing balanced as she rubs the toes of her left foot against her right calf. "There's this thing on Saturday night, too, that my Ideation and Process prof really wants me to go to."

"Yeah?" says Bucky, folding his arms, putting his pencil into his book to mark his place. "You want me to go with you?"

"No," Stevie answers immediately. "The half of my classmates that don't think I'm a lesbian already think I'm your girlfriend. I don't want to add fuel to that fire."

The half of Bucky's classmates that don't think Stevie's gay also think she's his girlfriend, but it seems to bother her a lot more than it does Bucky. He supposes he can understand why; there's a sort of sense of the proprietary about it, like everyone just assumes Stevie belongs to Bucky because she's a girl and they live together. The reality is probably closer to the opposite of that; if anything, Bucky has always belonged to Stevie. 

"What, then?" says Bucky. "You just don't want to go by yourself?"

"I don't really want to go at all," Stevie says. "I guess it could be interesting. I just don't want to -- they think so little of me, you know."

Bucky shrugs. "That's on them, not you."

"Okay," Stevie says, tilting her head, still facing away from Bucky. The lines of her shoulderblades and the knobs of her spine shift beneath her t-shirt. For a minute Bucky can't see what she's doing, and then she says, "Can you take a photo of my hand for me?"

"Sure." Bucky gets up, slides his phone out of his back pocket, and wanders over, looking between Stevie and the painting. She paints so many women, many of them nude, and none of them look anything like her. They're all darkly-complected, extravagantly voluptuous, and they exude this aura of self-satisfaction, like they know how beautiful they are. Bucky has spent plenty of time trying to figure out what that means and all he's come up with is a load of bullshit and the confidence that he doesn't know what he's doing when it comes to interpreting art, or Stevie. 

He closes the blinds to get the lighting closer to right, and snaps a photo of Stevie's hand. "I'll text it to you," he says.

"Thank you," says Stevie. She glances down at her phone, and then leans forward and hugs Bucky. She's so small that her face fits right in the center of his chest and he can wrap both of his arms around her and come out almost touching himself again. "Thank you," she mutters.

He touches the top of her head, smoothing down cowlicks and sleep-mussed tufts. The temptation to kiss her there is strong, but she'll only feel coddled, and that'll piss her off. So he just rests his hand there for a moment instead. "You're welcome, Steve," he says, and lets her go.


	17. happy birthday Steve!

"Do you think Steve feels slighted?" Pepper asked.

Bucky turned away from the grill to glance over his shoulder at her. He was wearing a short pair of running shorts, sneakers, and a backwards baseball cap with the Captain America logo, and under the unceasing midday sun his shoulders had started to go a little pink. All of this paired with the incredulous look on his face served to paint quite a picture. "What?" he asked.

"I mean, I knew a girl growing up whose birthday was on Christmas, and she always said she hated having her birthday on a holiday," Pepper said. "I figured, Steve's birthday being July fourth, maybe he felt the same way."

"His _birthday_ ," Bucky said, making a derisive noise and turning back to the ribs. 

Pepper stared at the back of his head. "What?" she asked, after further elucidation proved not to be forthcoming. "What do you mean?"

"Come on," Bucky said. "He never told you? Never? You _really_ believe something that's that big of a coincidence is even possible? Captain America's birthday being on the fourth of July?"

"You mean," said Pepper slowly, "it's not?"

Bucky cleared his throat. 

"I've seen all of his official paperwork," Pepper said. "It's legally listed as his birthday. _It's on his driver's license._ "

"Propaganda has a way of becoming truth sometimes," Bucky said pleasantly, prodding the rack of ribs, which gave a gentle sizzle. 

Pepper shook her head incredulously. "When _is_ his birthday?" she asked.

"April," Bucky said. "Thirteen. Born on a Friday the thirteenth. I always thought that was a better gimmick anyway, you know. Never mind it has the added bonus of actually being true."

"I can't believe," Pepper said, "All this time -- Tony got him a birthday cake! It's huge! I couldn't stop him, he'll be so --"

Bucky shook his head, holding a finger to his lips. "Technically that's top secret information," he said. "I don't think Tony's clearance level is high enough."

Pepper blinked at him, and opened her mouth to say something else, except that she was interrupted by Steve and Sam appearing from where they'd gone to make a beer run. Sam clapped Bucky on the back and poked at the ribs, making appreciative noises, while Steve put the beer in a cooler and poured some ice in. He and Bucky smiled at each other, in this way that Pepper never got tired of watching; they were always just genuinely _happy_ to see each other, and it was so honest and simple that it made Pepper feel better about life in general almost every time she saw it. 

They kissed briefly and detached from each other with obvious reluctance, and Pepper didn't miss the way Steve's eyes went over Bucky, although she had to laugh when his gaze landed on the hat and he made a face. "I'm being supportive," Bucky said, tapping the brim. "It's just twice as appropriate today, is all."

Steve started to answer him, but he was waylaid monstrously by the arrival of Tony and the cake. Tony had been so psychotically excited by the whole prospect -- mostly, Pepper thought, he wanted to embarrass Steve -- that Pepper was surprised he hadn't decided to helicopter the cake in, or something equally as ostentatious. Still, it had sparklers all over it, shooting sparks in every imaginable direction, and Tony was dressed head-to-toe in red, white, and blue. What a gaudy monstrosity.

Steve stood with his hands dangling by his side and his mouth slightly open, staring at the cake. He traded a short, guilty glance with Bucky that Pepper only saw because she was looking for it, and as he did, a very beautiful, very curvaceous young woman wearing a sequined bustier popped out of the top of it and started singing "Happy Birthday" to Steve.

She had clearly done this before, because as soon as she had left a red-lipstick kiss on Steve's cheek, she made herself scarce, leaving them all to deal with the tremendous awkwardness of the situation on their own. "I don't know what to say," Steve said finally.

"'Thank you Tony for this unforgettable birthday experience,' would be a start," said Tony.

Steve shut his mouth, and his jaw worked for a moment. "Thank you," he said.

"There!" Tony said. "You're welcome. Happy birthday! Are those ribs ready?"

"Ten minutes," said Bucky. He smiled broadly at Steve. " _Happy birthday,_ sweetheart. Have some cake while you wait."

Steve visibly radiated discomfort, and something about it was so ridiculous to Pepper that she almost couldn't stop herself from laughing. She had been sitting very still with her glass of wine throughout the whole fiasco, but now she was shaking from the effort. She made eye contact with Sam briefly and found him in the same situation, but she couldn't laugh! Because if she started laughing, she'd give everything away, and like Bucky had said -- this was very clearly an important matter of national security.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All I'm saying is there's no _possible_ way that Steve Rogers is a Cancer.


End file.
